


Light

by thepoette



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Gen, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:44:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepoette/pseuds/thepoette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fallen angel, Jophiel, reminds Castiel what they once were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light

**Author's Note:**

> written for the [spnwritingbattle](http://spnwritingbattle.tumblr.com) on tumblr. Prompt: Light
> 
> [thepoette](http://thepoette.tumblr.com) vs endversecas
> 
> originally posted on tumblr [here](http://thepoette.tumblr.com/post/63346001613/light-spn-writing-battle)

_Flickering, his eyes struggle open. A white-haze blade enters through their slits. It’s searing. But it’s light—nothing more than light surrounding him._

_He dangles, hovering in numb stasis; his hands pinched bloodless together overhead. His neck is tucked in by gravity. His need to understand his surroundings drags his gaze upward, skin sticking to skin with what must be blood._

_Above, the saucer of a single overhanging lamp halos over his body. On the concrete floor beneath his feet lies its boundary, the extent of all his human visibility._

S _ilence. It pounds into his shallow meat-casing._

_No._

_That’s the fist and broken lead pipe that sent him into darkness, barbaric methods considering who._

“You’ve brought this upon yourself.” _Anger seethes out from the black circumference of nothing that encircles him. It doesn’t have corners or walls, anything to hide him from the acid poised in his direction._

“Jophiel…” _it’s a breath laced with agony and soured by guilt._

_Once considered the angel of illumination, Jophiel stands in the dark, alone in his machinations against one who was once his kin._

_Enraged, he brings that lead pipe to bear. Like a dagger, he brings it down solidly on his prisoner’s leg. The bone gives way with a raw scream._

“No…” _the fallen angel rails_ , “we are no longer of _God_ , Castiel!”

 

They’d traced the broken call.

They enter the bar like madmen, barking out descriptions to complete strangers. Its’ the bartender, jaded faced, thin-lipped, who answers them.

A man in his late thirties. Brown hair. Blue eyes.

He’d been at the bar until a half hour ago. A regular had followed him out back.

“Address?”

“Sure. Just be careful though. Ben Colbert’s been acting funny since the meteor shower.”

That only sets them running for the car faster.

 

_His vision has gone hazy, soft pipping at the edge of all things. There are pathways igniting in his brain, even as they die._

“I was light!” _Jophiel cries as he swings._

_Cas thinks with breaking synapses. He thinks of the dimensions he encapsulated, the frequencies at which he vibrated which could melt bone. He thinks of stepping on the sands of the Sahara and the way he left a single grain undisturbed._

_There are bursts exploding with every one of Jophiel’s strikes. He feels his body go heavy with recompense. His head swivels up at the artificial halo that now crowns him._

“I was light!”

_He reaches with bound fingers to a circumference going paralyzed, and tries to touch the shadow-thing rising over him, the corona of a man shaped by eclipse._

 

The streets are silent. They give way to the Impala, her onyx surface sliding effortlessly through asphalt lanes as quick as mercury in the night.

Dean’s fingers clench, wrenching the steering wheel a hard right. Sam’s jaw tightens down on complaints; his own hands dig into his denim-clad kneecaps.

“Shouldn’t have left him alone.”

It’s on repeat through the elder brother’s lips, an unbroken loop since they realized what happened. Dean is a jagged surface across which traffic lights and streetlamps hover cautiously.

Sam doesn’t say how his brother’s been stifling. How every word since they’d found Cas or Cas had found them three months back has been clouding Dean’s forgiveness.

 

_A final swing, something dislodges. Fire squeezes between his cells under skin, playing on the teeth of his broken ribs. His spine arches on that ridden pathway of agony. He breaks his lips on a shallow gasp._

_His chains_ _rattle as sharply as his torso as he fights for air. But there’s only the light bulb hanging apathetically above him. The friendless face of his once-brother finally deigns to meet his; blank features, indiscernible in his breaking vision as Jophiel stands intimate distance before him._

_Sternum to sternum, Jophiel stops his swaying with a flick of his fingers. He stares eyelevel and waits._

_The tension_ _of his arms unravels. That single thread of air weaving from his mouth to lungs finally cuts. He hovers midair, unplugged from the earth reduced to staring, until the light goes out._

_And the light is going out. Jophiel basks before it._

_Under the fallen angel’s stare, Castiel grows heavy, the pain of his body transmuted to lead. He sinks far and fast. Jophiel remains unmoved throughout._

_Until the fallen angels eyes spring open in surprise. In his vessel, a black stain blooms across his sternum. Cas barely feels the soak of it before Jophiel’s mouth and eyes blast off._

_White. White everywhere. And then black._

Dean throws the angel blade to the ground, disgusted. The thing he’d stabbed in the back falls to the ground once the light works fade out.

Sam is working on the chain along Cas’ wrists. Terror written in his movements as he picks the locks. Dean can see the why of it.

Cas doesn’t breathe. Dean doesn’t have to check his neck to know.

It means nothing. Dean is absolute as he braces his friends body. Sam unlocks an arm. It drapes languidly across Dean’s shoulders. Sam is shuddering as he joins his brother with the other freed arm.

They take his weightlessness raggedly. They set to work bringing him back. Breaths exchanged through slack bluing lips, as the other works on pumping his sternum viciously up and down.

“Dean.” It breaks across Sam’s tongue only once as Dean continues to breathe.

“No, dammit!" Dean locks his fingers in place, brings that slack mouth open and forces whatever fire growing in the pit of his stomach to travel to Cas. He wants those eyes open and staring, not open and dull and glassy as they are right now. He wants the light back in them. The light. It’s still there. It’s got to be there…it has to…

A small whimper of air fractures the stillness. Shatters any modicum of resolution Dean has.

“Cas,” Dean says in lieu of thanks.

“ _Dean_ …” Cas pants it silently as Sam watches with watery eyes. ” _I was…light once_...”

They wait quietly for him to finish.

" _So light…but now all I f-feel is…h-heaviness."_

 

fin.


End file.
